South African mobile service provider MTN has revealed that it has fallen victim to acts of vandalism in many areas of the country – and that these incidents are on the increase. In a statement, MTN said that criminals are vandalising transformers and siphoning diesel at its cell phone network tower sites.

MTN revealed that it has been the victim of vandalism in many areas of the country (Image source: EXP South Africa)

“We urge the community to report this kind of crime if it is spotted as it hinders the delivery of much needed communications services. The siphoning of fuels and vandalism of masts could have a devastating impact of crippling our network, leaving our customers and community without access to communications services,” said Eddie Moyce, Chief Customer Experience Officer at MTN SA.

Moyce also added that it appears to be a syndicate at work, one that is also damaging electric fences at MTN sites and stealing batteries.

“It is only through the continued support of the community that we are able to combat incidents like these and ensure quality of services,” concludes Moyce.

These incidents have occured at the same time the company suffered an outage on its South African data network recently and also experienced a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyber-attack.

A denial-of-service cyber-attack is a common tactic used by cyber criminals to flood a particular website with packet requests (traffic), to the point where the servers cannot handle the load and collapse under the pressure.